The Release Of Constrictions Unknown

NE MT. HOOD—The recent realization that I should be focusing my attention on helping others to awaken the Divine within, rather than on straight-up enlightenment, has left me with a deep felt sense of peace and direction. Though I’m not ready to start down the teaching path, something inside has clicked into a place it didn’t know it was out of.

Similar to the resolution of the Emptiness/Fullness Paradox, this insight into my focus has felt like a release of energy, like a dropping of some unknown burden. A relaxing of tension that I wasn’t previously aware of—yet had gripped me nonetheless.

PS: Don’t cling to the idea of enlightenment. Isn’t this wonderful just as it is? The love, the blending, enfolding, and enlivening of God thru you? At this point, I’m largely in agreement with Adya: Now it is up to Grace (out of your hands).

Today—online and by many of the latest nondual teachers—enlightenment is really nothing more than nihilism in disguise. It is just the mental aspects of nondual theory.

I want nothing to do with their mental games. The mind is the whole problem.

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9 thoughts on “The Release Of Constrictions Unknown”

On one side you have nondualism that says nothing is true, and which is true, even though it does leave you with the unpleasant feeling of emptiness. On the other you have this which you call love and which seems like a reinforced illusion. What is love than a chemistry reaction inside the body? You can simply “create” love if thats what you`re looking for. How is that any “true” though? After that feeling is gone you`re back where you started.

So you`re in this hole. Nondualism comes and say the hole doesnt exist and you should empty yourself of your ego and stuff in order to get out. End result is you`re still in the hole, now feeling like a zombie as well.
Mysticism tells you that you can get out of the hole by imagining love and gods and stuff. Same hole but now you occasionally sense a divine presence.
Great help all of you! 😀

Cool Wayne. ‘I’ have said as much in the past in respect of other ‘teachers’ (hesitate to say ‘gurus’). If there ain’t LOVE, there ain’t nothing. St Paul said as much, and while ‘I’ am today no religionist, IMO he had it right. Thanks for your insight, as always.

Hi Andrei – my insight (FWIW – don’t believe me) is that the energy of the Universe, that from which everything is made, IS Love. Not only it is not an illusion, it is the very stuff of which all existence comprises.

I guess that’s why “A Course In Miracles” isn’t more popular among ‘nondual’ spiritual seekers these days; because it requires a degree of humility to be willing to accept Divinity and surrender to It. (The Course is just one practical step each day, 365 days.) Of course, someone who was truly dedicated to non-duality, by her own claims, would have to drop ALL presumptions, including ideas like “there is no truth”, “there is no authority”, and eventually even the idea of non-duality itself.

My teacher, David Hawkins, wisely called his teachings “devotional nonduality”, and likened the spiritual pathway to a discovery of the presence of God. He also warned against seeking for the void, or nothingness, as the ultimate state of consciousness, saying that, upon negating everything that can possibly be thought about oneself, and reaching an experience of incredible, spectacular nothingness, the mind mistakenly negates love as an attachment, and therefore has not reached the ultimate state. In such a case, one has to eventually come out of the void to resolve the paradox he has set up with his intensive focus on the ‘not-this/not-that’ practice. The paradoxes of ‘nothingness-vs.-everythingness’ and ‘existence-vs.-nonexistence’ turn out to just be lingering mentalizations, and not realities at all.

In other words, not only is Love the ultimate state of consciousness, but it is also descriptively non-dual. Love is a field from which everything arises. It has no opposite.

Andrei, I think part of the problem is that language itself is simply not up to the task at hand. The best it can do is point at things, give hints, create analogies, etc. A description of the view from a mountaintop is not the view itself.

I’d like to spend more time describing the experience of mine that Wayne alluded to in his last post (Four Breakthroughs), but words — at least my words, at this time — cannot do it justice. I’m unable to use language to fully explain and detail what is beyond language, and beyond mind.

I will say that, for a brief time, every fiber of my being was aware of that unnameable Intelligence/Love/Energy/Space, the Intelligence that Wayne says is “operating behind the perceptions of our minds and emotions and senses… and is happy to participate in our lives… if we are only willing to open the door and let Her in.”

I had no idea I was opening the door until AFTER the fact. But it was clear to me during and after my experience that I was a willing participant in, but not the architect of, a complex set of conditions that “let Her in.” Had I purposely set out to create ALL the conditions on my own, I would surely have failed. There were simply too many “coincidental” ingredients outside my control… including many ingredient I would have called “bad” and made every effort to remove.

The ingredients I contributed were willingness, desire, readiness … but mostly, I think, a sort of openness to surrender, to stop resisting WHAT ALREADY IS. I forfeited my mind-driven need to understand and explain, and I stopped resisting the suffering that I had been fighting off. Some sort of alchemy took place where the suffering was transformed from the problem into the solution, from the pain into the release from pain.

So I think part of opening the door is to stop labeling things as “good” or “bad” and to stop spending every moment judging the contents of that moment (or the one just past, or just about to come). Every moment of non-judgement, non-analysis, non-commentary leaves a moment of potential opening for “Her” to leak in.

I too experiences such coincidences.I had proof of a higher intelligence at work. I can see in my every day life that when one releases control and simply is, life unfolds a lot easier. Heck, when you release the tiller, life unfolds while when you try to control, have your ego do the working, nothing gets done. What I mean by nothing is not getting a cup of coffee but actual big stuff. I trust in that intelligence that governs life more than I trust my own and its not some “mystical surrender” but its what I discovered with cold facts. We, our ego, is too small to achieve something grand in life.
I also had experienced this love some of you talk about, and in one of the occasions I was doing a meditation from Wayne.
Unfortunately that was a fleeting moment and 5 minutes later I was back to being a little person in a little world. So of course I dont put too much weight on it anymore. No serious change happened. Its just like smoking a joint. It affects your brain chemicals for as long as it take place giving you a feeling of euphoria (for lack of a better term).
Obviously those of you who talk about it must have felt it more than me and thats why you have more respect for it.
Im simply at a loss right now as to what step one in my position should take. Probably something in between nondualism and mysticism, a whole lot of ego self digestion with a pich of mysticism salt.

“Unfortunately that was a fleeting moment and 5 minutes later I was back to being a little person in a little world. ”

I understand completely… that has been my experience over the years… MANY years. The difference this time is, I feel okay with that. Rather than judge my return to being a little person as “bad” I am simply trying to observe it as what “is” and to not resist the fact that my conditioned ego is just doing what it does: trying to separate itself from the formless Love/Energy/Intelligence and recreate the structure it knows, in the form of thought/emotion/reaction.

If I “fight” that, who is doing the fighting? The ego itself. The resistance can only exist in the ego, in the little me.

When you have a fleeting moment of being one with the world, and it quickly disappears, who is it that is unhappy to return to ego? It has to be ego itself, the little you, because the Big You cannot be unhappy.

That is the dilemma: the ego is the barrier to feeling Connected, but the moment the ego IS feeling Connected and it senses that “euphoria” it desperately wants to hold onto it, own it, and become it. And in so doing, the ego re-establishes its dominance and is no longer Connected.

Think about what it means when you say you “don’t put too much weight on it anymore”. The fact that you say “unfortunately” it was fleeting, and that you are at a loss, means you DO give it weight.

Suppose I pointed to a swimming pool that appeared empty, even though I assured you it was not, and suggested diving in head first. Only someone who truly gave the idea no weight would dive in without resistance or worry. (Please don’t try this at home, folks… for metaphor purposes only.)

Wayne said this in an older post:
“You will never experience the Divine Within until you change one simple thing. You have to stop trying to gain it, stop trying to win it. You have to stop trying to add it to your life. It is already there, and always has been. All you have to do is learn how to uncover it.”

That doesn’t mean stop reading, talking, and thinking about. And it doesn’t mean stop wanting it. It means that it may arise if you SUBTRACT other (ego-related) things — like resistance — from your life rather than trying to ADD consciousness to your life. How would you add what is already there? And it may arise when you least expect it, if you participate (knowingly or not) with the greater Intelligence in creating the “right” conditions for Awakening to consciousness.

When the tide of ego is low, a little island of consciousness may peak out above the surface, only to disappear again when the ego rises. Would I like to make the entire ocean of ego simply dry up by wishing it were so? Sure! But all I need to know right now is that below that ocean, that thin layer of surface ego that I see sloshing around, is an entire planet of consciousness. That the mountains are hidden by water does not mean they don’t still exist underneath the water.

@Noah: Well said, on both accounts. Thanks for relaying such an inspiring story (in the first comment).

@Wayne: Thanks for continuing to create such an inspiring blog.

@Andrei: Hang in there. You don’t have to worry about ‘creating’ mystical happenings or occurrences. There’s no need to try to be a changed person, or more spiritual… When the weights and contents of egoic consciousness are seen through and no longer valued, they fall of their own.

I don’t mean to keep proselytizing, but if you need a step, just do step one in “A Course In Miracles.” You don’t have to worry about the other 364 days, just start with day 1: “Nothing I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place] means anything.” I think this step can apply to anyone at any time. I just cracked up upon reviewing it, ha-ha (although it may seem like a bit of a challenge at first).

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